The Defenestration Of Susan Rice

Photo Illustration by DonkeyHotey via Flickr/Special to The Politics Blog

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Congratulations to John McCain and Lindsey Graham. They got the head they wanted for the wall of the He-Man Woman Haters Club. They ginned up a fake controversy, got enough people to buy it, and then got the president to decide that they would be the ones to decide who the next Secretary Of State is. Good job, all of you, including you, Mr. President. Seriously.

And note to John Kerry — don't take the job. Tell your old buddies to stuff it. You don't want to walk into the State Department over a body that's still warm.

Despite a series of closed-door meeting with Capitol Hill lawmakers to drum up support, Rice continued to face questions from senators key to her confirmation. After a Nov. 28 sitdown with Rice, Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said she couldn't yet endorse the veteran diplomat and raised a new point of concern: her role in protecting American embassies in Kenya and Nairobi that were bombed by terrorists in 1998. Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) suggested Rice was seen as too much of an Obama loyalist and the GOP preferred "someone of independence." In her letter to Obama, Rice took aim at her GOP critics. "The position of secretary of state should never be politicized," she wrote, adding, "I'm saddened that we have reached this point, even before you have decided whom to nominate. We cannot afford such an irresponsible distraction from the most pressing issues facing the American people."

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Who in the White House gives a rat's ass whether Bob Corker — who race-baited Harold Ford out of a winnable Senate seat and now has another high-profile African American as a trophy — thinks a nominee is excessively loyal to the guy who, you know, nominated her? And I am nowhere near as contemptuous of Senator Grumpy and Huckleberry Closetcase as I am of a fool like Kelly Ayotte and an abject coward like Susan Collins, who couldn't find Nairobi if you dropped it on the highway north of Bangor, deciding that she needed to be a geopolitician so some woodchuck wingnut in a flannel shirt won't primary her next time. They're all disgraces.

"If nominated, I am now convinced that the confirmation process would be lengthy, disruptive and costly - to you and to our most pressing national and international priorities," Rice wrote in a letter to President Obama, saying she's saddened by the partisan politics surrounding her prospects. "That trade-off is simply not worth it to our country...Therefore, I respectfully request that you no longer consider my candidacy at this time," she wrote in the letter obtained by NBC News.

There are days in which this country seems to be little more than a pre-school. This is one of them.